


Responsible

by snailboat64



Category: Human Target - Fandom
Genre: Adventure, Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-30
Updated: 2011-01-30
Packaged: 2017-10-15 06:04:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 17
Words: 16,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/157769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snailboat64/pseuds/snailboat64
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A case goes bad but who is responsible and who feels that responsibility? An episode length-ish case fic with action, angst, bad language and a bit of humour thrown in too. Pre Ilsa and Ames. Quite heavy on the angst!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> **Disclaimer: Not my characters, except the ones that are.**

**Disclaimer: Not my characters, except the ones that are.**

 **Author's note: Please review. If you can't be kind, be specific!**

"This is Guerrero."

"Where the hell are you?"

Guerrero held phone a little further from his ear as the ex-cop bellowed louder than was surely necessary down the line.

"I'm right here dude. Where are you?"

"I don't have time for your wise-ass remarks right now. Chance needs your help. The jobs going south fast. Chance ditched his comms and…"

"Slow down there big guy. If Chance ditched his comms it's 'cos he chose to. If he wants my help, he'll ask for it. Seriously dude, Chance doesn't need his Big Mama today so go un-bunch your panties and braid your hair or something."

Guerrero smirked as he hung up, picturing a fuming Winston running a hand over his sweaty, bald head in a familiar gesture of frustration. He wasn't that surprised when moments later his cell phone went off again, the display flashing Winston's name.

"Dude…"

"Shut up Guerrero. We messed up. The PA was in on the whole thing. He handed the client and her kid over to Bateman's goons."

Guerrero knew he should have trusted his gut and over-ridden the client's insistence that her PA Harley was "absolutely trustworthy" a guy who she'd known "forever" and her best friend in the world. Maggie refused to believe anyone she trusted would betray her, which is why, he suspected, Chance took the job. The money wasn't great but Chance recognised the danger to the clueless designer and her young son. He knew he could help and she needed help. Sometimes it was just that simple with Chance.

Guerrero had little interest in the case. The financial reward was minimal and, as it was just a standard kidnap threat, it offered him no real challenge. Chance knew that Guerrero had dealings with Bateman in the past so he reluctantly agreed to scope out Maggie's offices as a technical consultant to support Chance's cover as a potential investor. Guerrero hadn't recognised any of Bateman's crew in the stream of faces that flowed in and out of the modern office building that Maggie's furniture design company worked out of.

He'd spent twenty minutes or so beefing up Maggie's woefully inadequate computer security and browsing though her personal and financial documents when he looked up to see a twenty something year old man in a very expensive suit standing in the doorway. He was definitely not pleased to see this scruffy looking man going through his boss's computer.

"Dude, you got any decent coffee around here?" Guerrero said turning his attention back to Maggie's phone records.

"There's a coffee machine in the hall. I'm actually Ms Garner's…"

Guerrero cut him off mid-sentence. "Personal assistant. Yeah, Harvey, I know who you are. I'm happy for you dude. You gonna get me that coffee or not?"

Harvey obviously considered himself far too high up the food chain to be fetching coffee for scruffy looking IT guys but Guerrero was amused to see the younger man shuffle off to fetch his coffee regardless. Guerrero made the guy feel uncomfortable, but that was nothing compared to the man's reaction to being in a room with Maggie and Chance. He fidgeted, cleared his throat, and was visibly sweating.

 _The dude might as well have a neon light flashing above his head spelling out the word guilty._

Guerrero caught Chance's eye and saw his friend had also clocked the guy's multitude of tics and tells. He sighed. He knew it was Chance's thing to draw the threat in to the open, to expose the plot against his client, but really? He could just dispose of that two faced PA. Make it look like an accident… Chance's way was probably the wiser option though. It was unlikely Harvey was the one ultimately responsible. He was just another link in the chain and until Chance could identify everyone involved he'd want to keep the back-stabbing turd close by.

"Winston, Chance can handle a simple extraction…"

"You're not getting it Guerrero. They killed the kid."

Many, ok most, people considered Guerrero a cold blooded killer but in that second his blood turned to ice in his veins.

"Explain." Guerrero demanded.


	2. Chapter 2

Maggie Garner had turned up unannounced of the office one morning, with her three year old son in tow. They weren't exactly in the yellow pages so Winston knew someone must have referred her to them but she was deliberately vague as to who. She was nervous but only because she was obviously unfamiliar with the situation she found herself in. Winston got the impression that the woman didn't really know what she should be asking of a private security specialist but someone had sent her to them on the understanding it would be helpful.

"So you see me and Georgie here just need a little help, with security, obviously!" Maggie finished her rambling description of her life since leaving high school. She'd attended art college, dropped out to have her kid and wound up in San Francisco opening her furniture design business. Maggie squeezed Georgie's little hand in a way that she probably intended to be reassuring. Unfortunately this startled the boy and he dropped his plastic toy dinosaur, letting out a piercing wail.

Winston had required all of his police experience dealing with hysterical witnesses to follow the woman's stream of consciousness rendition of her life when the kid was quiet. With the kid hollering and carrying on like that, he didn't stand a chance. Maggie seemed oblivious to the effect of her child's crying on Winston. She scooped the toddler into her lap, bouncing him up and down vigorously as she continued her conversation with Winston. Georgie, however, was not to be mollified without the return of his dinosaur.

Just when Winston was sure his ears were actually starting to bleed, Guerrero appeared at the door.

"Gimmee" he said, reaching towards the inconsolable child. "I'm great with kids."

 _Dear God, she's not going to hand her child over to that murderous son-of-a-bitch! She really doesn't have a clue about security!_

To Winston's horror Maggie handed her child to Guerrero with out hesitation. Guerrero immediately saw the toy on the floor that the kid was screaming for and promptly returned it to him. It was like someone flipped a switch. The child stopped crying and cuddled his precious dinosaur to his chest.

Maggie finally registered Winston's gob-smacked expression.

"That was okay wasn't it?" she asked, panic beginning to rise. " I mean he works here and he's a good guy? Right?"

Winston pulled himself together as Guerrero, smirking at the other man's obvious discomfort, took the now content little boy through to the kitchen.

"Hey little dude, you want some milk? Yeah? Straight up or on the rocks?"

"Yeah.. Yeah it's fine." Winston said trying not to think about what Maggie's reaction would be if she knew who and what she'd just handed her son to. "Thanks Guerrero!" he called out, to reassure the client that the child was in good, no, safe hands. Safe-ish hands. Probably… Guerrero raised his hand in acknowledgement but didn't turn round as he disappeared from view.

"So it's just you and the little guy is it?" Winston asked, trying to steer the interview back to the pertinent facts.

"Yeah. Well no. I have a personal assistant!" From the woman's pride Winston could tell that this was a new development in her life and the novelty had not yet worn off.

"So how did you find her? An agency?"

"No it's a him! I've known Harvey forever. We kind of grew up together. He's got tons of business experience so when I got the funding for the business and I decided to move out to San Francisco he said he'd come work for me. He's too good for the job really but he's had some bad luck with the company he was working for - totally not his fault by the way - so he was looking for a change anyway."

Winston allowed himself to tune out Maggie's anecdotes of her childhood in LA with Harvey as he wrote out his notes. He circled the name Harvey and made a mental note to get Guerrero to do some digging in to the guy's background. He wondered what the real story here was. People never turned up on their doorstep asking for help without having a specific problem in mind. The key to Maggie's appearance must be in who referred her in the first place. He also needed to find out, tactfully if possible, where this excitable, young single mother suddenly got the funds to set herself up in a new business complete with personal assistant. Something here didn't smell right. Where was the kid's father?


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Disclaimer: sigh Guerrero, Chance and Winston are not mine, but I am responsible for the life and death of Georgie Garner.**

  


The sound of a child crying woke Chance from his doze on the sofa. Carmine lifted his head from his lap and fixed Chance with a droopy-eyed stare. Not for the first time, Chance marvelled at his dog's total lack of aggression. The wailing child didn't elicit so much as a bark. He doubted the dog would have even moved at all had Chance not sat up.

 _So much for pets being like their owners._

Chance stood up, stretched his arms up over his head and made his way down stairs to investigate the source of the disturbance. The crying stopped and Chance saw Guerrero walk past holding a small child. Chance heard Winston call out a pained "Thanks Guerrero" and chuckled at his partner's audible doubt over Guerrero's suitability as a baby sitter.

People were always surprised that Guerrero was good with kids, Chance included, but he seemed to have a knack at putting them at ease. At first Chance had put it down to Guerrero's slight stature and calm level voice, which must be less intimidating than Winston towering above them or Chance's muscular physique; but there was something else Chance couldn't quite put his finger on.

Chance watched bemused as Guerrero stood the kid on the kitchen counter and made roaring noises for the plastic dinosaur and provided scared little voices for imaginary victims running away from the four inch plastic terror.

"Raaahr! - No please don't eat me dude! I'm too young to die! - Raaahr! - No please don't eat me! Eat my wife she's fat and juicy!"

The kid giggled and clapped as the assassin, hacker and all round bad-ass massacred imaginary people for his entertainment.

On a whim, Chance decided to join in the game and leapt in to the kitchen doing the best dinosaur roar he could muster.

"RAAAAAAAAAAHRRRRR!"

The child blinked in terror, then almost in slow motion his face crumpled and he let out his loudest wail yet. Chance was mortified but Guerrero's lips twitched in to a small smile as he scooped up the child, who buried his face in Guerrero's shirt.

"Dude, he's like three years old. I don't think he's quite ready for the full-on Jurassic Park experience just yet."

Embarrassed, Chance rubbed at the back of his neck and mumbled, "yeah, maybe it was a little loud…"

"Dude, he peed his pants." He looked at the down at the whimpering child. "Hey, little guy. Do you think we should scare the big scary giant away?" Chance didn't like the sound of that, but it seemed to appeal to the runny nosed child. "You gonna help me?" The child thought for a second, then nodded his head once, in agreement.

By the time Winston and the child's mother reached the kitchen Guerrero and the little boy were pelting Chance with the contents of the refrigerator. Chance was taking his punishment for scaring the child with good humour, laughing and making half-hearted attempts to duck out of the way of the barrage of food. Georgie was having a great time, despite his missiles falling short of his target. Guerrero was more than making up for it though and Winston got caught in the splash-back as Chance was hit in the side of the face with a carton of last night's Chinese take out.

Chance laughed as he picked noodles from his ear and saw Winston standing there with a client, presumably the child's mother. He didn't need to see the look of thunder on his partner's face to know that he was less than impressed with the two of them behaving like overgrown school children in front of a client.

 _Just wait until he sees what happened to his lunch._

It occurred to Chance that the reason Guerrero was at ease with kids was because he had no problem acting like them. If he wanted or needed something, he took it. He made no compromise in what he said or did.

"Go 'way doood!" Georgie shouted as Guerrero helped him throw one last projectile, a raw egg. With Guerrero's assistance the child managed to throw it far enough to hit Chance in the chest.

No, Guerrero wasn't child-like by any stretch of the imagination. He just managed to bring out the inner psychopath in children.

Winston saw Maggie and Georgie Garner out to their car, making arrangements for a meeting with Chance a time more convenient for both of them.

 _Dear Lord, let her have the sense to leave the kid with a sitter!_

He returned to survey the devastation in the kitchen. Chance had the good grace to attempt some kind of clean up, but his efforts with a broom just spread the spoiled food around the floor rather than clean it up. Guerrero seemed to be on a salvage mission, seeing if there was anything left worth eating.

"What the hell were you two playing at? I had a client in there! I must have been crazy to let Guerrero look after the kid, I guess I'm just lucky the boy is still alive. But I expected better of you Chance!" he yelled jabbing his finger at him. Chance did his best to look shame-faced about it but Guerrero was actually laughing quietly to himself.

"Why on God's green earth did you feel it necessary to throw all this food around?"

"It was Chance's fault dude. He scared the kid so bad he peed his pants."

"Tattle-tale."

"But how did this…" Winston threw his hands up, indicating the general devastation, "possibly help the situation?"

"You kinda had to be there dude." And with that Guerrero slunk out of the room.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Disclaimer: My blood, sweat and tears, Fox's intellectual property. Grrr!**

"Damn, I knew that name rang a bell!" Winston swore, sweeping his hands over the smooth surface of his head. "The poor girl might actually be in trouble after all. Damn Guerrero, too busy my ass!"

Winston had been forced to do his own research in to Maggie and Georgie Garner, and Harvey, whose full name turned out to be Harvey Cartwright. Winston had taken Guerrero's easy rapport with the Garner kid as an indicator that he'd actually help out on this case. He'd been wrong.

"Dude, I'm a bit too busy to play office boy for you right now." Guerrero said, leaning back in a lazy stretch, resting his feet on the coffee table. "You can handle a couple of background checks. Buy yourself some donuts, it'll be just like the old days back on the force."

"Yeah, like you're so busy right now!"

Guerrero shrugged, "What can I say dude? I'm in demand."

Winston sighed, "I just thought you took to the kid. I thought you might show an interest in his wellbeing."

Again the shrug. "He's not my kid."

Winston felt a chill at the thought of Guerrero being a father.

"How did you get to be so good with kids anyway?"

"There're just people dude." he explained. " Small, messy and demanding people. Besides people tend to lose focus in a situation when their kids are freaking out. Keep the kids sweet and you get Ma and Pa's full attention. Know what I mean?"

"No." he replied. "I'm trying very hard not to know what you mean."

Guerrero gave a wolfish smile and Winston felt another chill run down his spine.

And now it seemed Maggie was connected to the damn Cartwright family!

The Cartwrights weren't your everyday mobster family. Back in the day Jimmy Cartwright had been pretty old-school with his fingers in all the usual pies, illegal gambling, drugs, prostitution and murder-for-hire, but his kids had taken a different route. Jimmy made sure his son Ethan and daughter Joanna received the best college education his criminal fortune could buy. It was a badly kept secret that despite the veneer of respectability their college degrees and legitimate professions gave them, Ethan and Joanna were a chip off the old block and they made their daddy proud.

Ethan was a dealer in fine art and antiquities and, to the casual observer, an upstanding member of the LA art scene. Joanna was the CEO of a Silicone Valley software company that had a reputation for some highly questionable business practices. Harvey Cartwright was their cousin, their father's brother's son, and Maggie had not been kidding when she mentioned he'd had some trouble with his previous employers. He'd narrowly avoided Federal prison for doing some seriously creative book-keeping for Bateman's, a chic LA nightspot run by an Irish-American low life named Adrian Bateman. Bateman himself had links with organised crime and his IRA sympathies were widely known. Harvey had to have friends in some pretty high places to have his ass pulled out of that particular fire. Winston's money was on Ethan Cartwright having a hand in it somewhere. Ethan did regular business with some very important people including a district attorney and several judges.

Much as he hated to admit it but he really could have used Guerrero's help with all this. Maggie Garner's personal assistant (boy, did that job title seem unlikely, given the man's history!) had personal connections to some very interesting people and that had so be something to do with whoever sent her to them .

As for Maggie Garner herself, he hadn't been able to find out much more than what she'd told him herself already. She was a single child, parents deceased (her father when she was eleven, cancer; her mother when Maggie was nineteen, car accident, the mother's fault for drink-driving, no other casualties). He hadn't even been able to find out who Georgie's father was. Her life seemed pretty uneventful. So how had she ended up in San Francisco with her own business, an over-qualified PA with a criminal history, and a recommendation to seek advice from a private security firm?

It looked like Chance was going to have to work this out on the job. Winston didn't like sending him in with so little information especially when there was a connection to a family with such a rich criminal pedigree…

Who was he kidding, a vague brief to help a pretty young damsel in distress with a cute kid to boot? Chance's curiosity would get the better of him and he'd be using those big blue eyes to charm the details out of the woman in no time, and succeed where Winston had failed by trying to wrestle information from his damn computer.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Disclaimer: Fox owns them but I let them out of the box...**

Winston had arranged for Chance and Guerrero to meet Maggie Garner at her office, minus the three year old and the food fight. Chance had dressed for his cover as a prospective investor in a efficient looking grey suit but Guerrero made no such effort, showing up in his usual shirt-jacket-jeans combo.

"You're late." Chance said, unimpressed but unsurprised by Guerrero's time keeping and wardrobe choice.

"Chill dude. I'm just the IT guy. You could have gone on in without me."

Chance chose to ignore the comment. "I'm thinking Maggie's sudden change in circumstances has something to do with her kid's dad. Winston couldn't find any record of him. I don't like this Bateman connection either. You did a job for him a while back, what can you tell me about him?"

"Not much that you don't already know, dude. He wanted some dirt on local law enforcement, I did a little digging for him."

Chance fixed him with a cynical stare. Guerrero rolled his eyes.

"Okay, I may have had a bit of a poke around in Bateman's computer system. Professional curiosity."

"But you could, I don't know, identify anyone on his crew that happened to be in town and showing an interest in a certain furniture designer not a million miles from here?"

"Is that why you dragged me down here? Buddy, if you wanted me to put a file together on Bateman's crew you should have just said so. I got places to be, y'know."

"I know, but I wanted you to check out Maggie's computer so this is a kind of two-for-one deal anyway."

"Whatever dude, can we just get on with it?"

Maggie Garner was waiting for them in the reception area as they entered the building. She wasn't exactly hard to spot, her boho dress and chunky, handmade jewellery standing out in stark contrast to the utilitarian business suits worn by the handful of people Chance saw in and around the building. She greeted them both with a bright smile and a handshake.

"Thank you so much for coming Mr…?"

Winston had warned her that Chance would be working under an assumed name as part of his cover but nerves had got the better of her and she couldn't recall what she was supposed to call the men now standing in front of her.

"Daniels. Philip Daniels and this is…" Chance began to introduce Guerrero but he cut in.

"Bob. The IT guy."

Maggie smiled politely but Guerrero was no more forthcoming. He flashed an awkward, thin-lipped smile at her went back to mentally mapping out the layout of the foyer and the locations of the security cameras.

"Okay." Maggie said, purely to break the silence.

Chance stepped in to get things running.

"So, I hear good things about your work Ms Garner. I would like to see some examples before we start talking numbers…?"

"Of course. Mr. Daniels." She said, following his lead. "Please, come up to my office. It's on the fourth floor."

"Computer?" Never one for social niceties, Guerrero got down to business immediately.

Maggie indicated which room was her office. "Won't you need my password or something?" she asked.

"Doubtful." he called out, already seated in her office.

"Don't worry. He's very… resourceful." Chance reassured his slightly perplexed client. "Have you got somewhere we could sit down and talk?"

"Yes, through here." she said, leading Chance through to what was obviously supposed to be a conference room, although it seemed to be pressed in to service as Maggie's design studio.

 _It looks as though a bomb went off in a craft supply store,_ thought Chance.

Much of the wall space was taken up with sketches, fabric swatches, photos and other apparently random scraps of paper. Two large tables were strewn with similar materials, several layers deep. Stacked on the floor were dozens of boxes. Chance took a quick look inside one that was sitting on the top of a pile, open but not yet unpacked. Yet more samples.

"Um, there's coffee in the hall. Please help yourself. I just to need to look in on Georgie." She hurried out of the room and returned a couple of minutes later carrying a cup of coffee and a baby monitor. Chance had made himself comfortable with a cup coffee and had found a folding chair. He sat leafing through one of her sketch books.

"These are good. Maybe I should consider an investment in your business." Maggie blushed at the compliment.

"Too be honest I'm not quite ready to start talking business with anyone yet." she said, aware of the irony of a furniture designer taking a meeting whilst seated on a cheap folding chair.

Chance smiled and placed the notebook back on one of the tables.

"I asked Harvey to watch Georgie while I was downstairs. I shouldn't really ask him to do that but I haven't quite got childcare sorted just yet. Georgie is having a nap right now but just in case." She held up the baby monitor before setting it down on the table next to her.

"Ms Garner…" Chance began.

"Maggie, please call me Maggie. Do I call you Philip? Or Mr. Daniels or what? I don't really know how all this works."

"Just call me Chance. Maggie, there's no point in me being modest here. I'm the best at what I do and if someone sent you to me, it means you have a serious problem. And if I'm going to help you with that problem I need you to tell me what it is."


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Disclaimer: The Fox owns the puppets but the Tree pulls the strings. Mwah ha ha ha!**

Maggie took a deep breath and exhaled slowly through tense lips. She wasn't sure how to begin. She seemed several years older than the talkative young woman whose rapid fire account of her life had tested Winston's note-taking skills the day before. To Chance's professional eye she looked on edge, distracted even.

"Maybe you could start with telling me who sent you to me…?" Chance prompted.

Maggie paused, then began to talk.

"What you need to remember is that a week ago I was selling wind chimes and hand-painted foot stools to tourists from my booth on the beach. I never expected all of this."

Chance nodded to encourage her to continue, deciding to hold back any questions until she had told her story.

"Me and Georgie were doing just fine until a couple of weeks back when, out of the blue, Georgie's father contacted me. It was a total shock because I never actually told him about Georgie. I mean, I thought he probably knew about him but I never went after him for child support or anything. I stopped seeing him as soon as I found out I was pregnant. Georgie's father isn't exactly daddy material if you know what I mean."

She sipped her coffee and considered how best to continue.

"He said that there were people out there that might use Georgie to get to him. I asked him how anyone would even know about Georgie but he just told me that they did and we were in danger. I didn't believe him at first. I guess I thought his sudden interest in Georgie meant he was going to try and get custody or something, that's why I'd kept his name off the birth certificate."

She took another sip of her coffee.

"I'd just scraped together the cash to put Georgie in day-care for two mornings a week when his father called me. I'd pretty much decided to just ignore him when I got a call on my cell from the woman who ran the day-care place. She said a man had tried take Georgie, passing himself off as his uncle. Luckily Sarah, the manager, knew that Georgie doesn't have any uncles so she called the police. He'd gone by the time they got there but I knew something was very wrong.

"I spoke to Georgie's father again and I just knew from his reaction that he wasn't the one who sent the guy. He totally freaked out. I had no idea he even cared about me and Georgie." Maggie's expression softened for a moment as she thought of her former lover. Chance could see there were still some unresolved feelings there.

"Was it Georgie's father that set you up here and told you to come to me?" She nodded.

Chance leaned back in his chair. It was as he suspected. This was all about her ex.

"Maggie, I think you know it's important that you're honest with me. I know Harvey Cartwright is not a childhood friend." Maggie tensed at Chance's words. "For a start he didn't grow up in LA, he lived in San Jose until he was seventeen. Also I find it slightly unlikely that a nice daughter of a pre-school teacher and a fireman such as yourself would be spending much time with a member of the notorious Cartwright family. Maggie, when you're going to tell a lie, keep it simple. Those elaborate anecdotes you told my colleague yesterday, although very entertaining, were way over-rehearsed and not the kind of stuff a client usually brings up in an interview. You were trying a bit too hard."

Maggie sighed. "Georgie's father told me to only trust two people. You and his cousin Harvey."

"So Georgie's father is.."

She nodded. "Ethan Cartwright."

Harvey Cartwright stood at the door and cleared his throat.

"Ms Garner? I think you should be aware that the ah… IT guy has finished with your computer and is now going through your personal effects. I just saw him empty your desk drawers on to the floor and…"

"What the hell…?" Maggie leapt up, grabbing the baby monitor as she went.

Chance swore under his breath and quickly followed her to her office.

"You got a problem dude. Someone is definitely running surveillance on Maggie. Someone's been accessing her computer remotely, not that there's really anything to find, aside from a few lolcats and a hardcore eBay addiction. Unfortunately Maggie here is still using her old eBay account, she just updated her shipping address to this office. Which is how they knew where to plant this." Guerrero tossed a small listening device to Chance.

"Oh, god." Maggie said, raising her hands to her face in horror.

"I'm sure it will be fine Maggie." Harvey said, appearing in the doorway. "Try not to worry."

Chance and Guerrero exchanged a look. It was plain to both of them that Harvey's body language did not match his words

"We're not going to be able get anything off this." Chance said throwing the bug in to the mess on the floor. "It's not exactly top of the line. You could pick it up at any good gadget store or any number of places online. Can you trace who's been hacking in to Maggie's computer?"

"Sure dude, if I had the time but I've got somewhere else to be. I told you I didn't have much time for this today."

Chance frowned. It was true, Guerrero had tried to get out of working this case, saying he had a prior engagement that he had to deal with. When Winston and Chance began pushing him as to what was quite so important he relented and agreed to spare them an hour of his time on the condition that they quit bugging him about what he was up to.

"Someone is after the kid. He's Ethan Cartwright's son." Chance said, in an a last ditch attempt to get his friend to show an interest. Guerrero raised an eyebrow in what might have been curiosity but it wasn't enough.

"Piece of cake, dude. I'm sure you can handle it." And he left.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Disclaimer: They belong to the big, bad Fox, but they come out to play with me.**

Chance checked in with Winston, filling him in on what he'd found out.

"Yeah, I figured this would be about the kid's dad. Ethan Cartwright eh? Didn't exactly do a great job of hiding them though." Winston said in to his Bluetooth ear piece as he paced the office.

"Maggie was a little resistant to the idea of leaving LA, she didn't make it easy. At least he sent her to us." Chance spoke softly in to his cell phone as Maggie prepared her sleepy son to leave. "I'm going to have to move them. The bad guys must know we're on board and I don't want them to pin us down here. I'm going to take them to a safe house. I'm thinking Grandma's."

"Swedish Grandma's or Grandma Lucile?" Winston asked, picking up on the codename.

"We're going to your Grandma's house?" asked Maggie, in disbelief.

Chance covered the microphone of his cell with one hand. "No, a safe house." He turned away from his confused client and spoke to Winston again. "The first one is closer. I need you to reach out to Ethan Cartwright. Find out who's after his kid. I don't think there's anything more Maggie can tell us."

"Okay, I'll get back to you after I've spoken to Cartwright. And Chance… watch that Harvey kid. Word is that his former employer is in town right now and I don't like it. We can't rule out Bateman's involvement in this."

"Understood." Chance hung up and looked at the shifty looking young man watching his every movement.

"Can't we just stay here? Call the police or something?" Maggie pleaded.

"The police in LA weren't able to help when someone tried to take Georgie, what makes you think SFPD will do any better?" Harvey said.

"Staying put is not an option." Chance said, peering through a narrow gap in the blinds at the parking lot bellow. A dark coloured, windowless van had just pulled up and three vicious looking men were climbing out and heading towards Maggie's building. There were no visible firearms, but Chance could tell they were all packing. Chance didn't have much time.

"Harvey, you got a child's seat in your car?"

"No, Georgie always rides with Maggie."

"You'll have to take her car then. Maggie, give him your keys. We have to spilt up."

Maggie pulled her drowsy child closer to her in a fiercely protective embrace.

"Georgie stays with me! I'm not letting him out of my sight!" Maggie hissed, the volume of her voice low but her tone leaving no doubt as to her sincerity.

"No one is taking Georgie away from you. I promise." Chance said as a large patchwork bag in the corner caught his eye. As he thought, it was stuffed with the kinds of things a mother with a small child would drag around with her everywhere. He upended it on the floor then retrieved a tiny pair of sneakers, a child's baseball cap and a spare fleece blanket from the heap on the floor.

"Take whatever you think Georgie is really going to need in the next couple of hours and put it in your purse. If it doesn't fit, we're leaving it behind."

"But what…? Oh." Maggie's words trailed off as Chance used the items from the bag, along with a couple of throw pillows from the couch where Georgie had been napping, to form a passable facsimile of a sleeping child wrapped in a blanket. He secured the bundle with a few staples and looked over his work.

"Not great, but it should pass as Georgie, at a distance. Catch!" Chance threw the bundle to Harvey, who fumbled it slightly. The improvised Georgie held together surprisingly well, despite it's rough treatment. Only one shoe fell off. Chance picked it up and reattached it, securing it with more staples. Maggie grabbed a box of crackers, some cartons of juice and a few of the less bulky items of clothing and stuffed them in her purse.

Suddenly the building's firm alarm went off, startling Maggie and Harvey, and scaring Georgie to terrified tears.

"Don't worry. It's just the fastest way to clear the building." Chance explained.

 _I'm going to have to do something about the kid crying._ Chance thought but Maggie was already cooing in the frightened child's ear, calming him down. Georgie's cries were already less frantic when Chance handed him the plastic dinosaur that he'd spotted on the couch.

"Thank you." Maggie mouthed. Despite the urgency of the situation, Chance couldn't help but smile at the frazzled young mother and her devotion to her son.

"I don't know that I really want to be your decoy!" Harvey protested as Chance relieved him of his cell phone, pressed a few keys and dropped it back in to the younger man's pocket.

"Relax. I'll take out the muscle. All you have to do is make sure anyone still watching from outside the building follows you. The black van out there is your main audience so make it good."

Chance hurried them to the door that lead to the stairs, taking the lead.

"Harvey, as soon as we get to the lobby I want you to head for the front door. Try not to get shot and try and handle that," he indicated the bundle, "as if it were a real child. Maggie, stay as close to me as you can and try and keep out of sight. If Georgie starts crying, keep quiet and hold this to his face." Chance handed her her own cell phone.

"I don't get it.." she began, before she registered the sound of her own voice coming from Harvey's jacket pocket.

"Oh. Clever."

"I thought so but it's only going to help if you keep quiet." Chance warned. She nodded.

"Right. Time for the fun stuff."

Chance knew that at least one of the men would stay behind in the lobby, on the off chance that they were dumb enough to take the elevator down. There were still a few stragglers from the offices on the floors above evacuating down the stairs so Chance risked a look over the railing. The bad guys probably wouldn't risk shooting blindly in to a group of office workers and as far as he knew they wanted Georgie alive anyway. He could see two men walking up the stairs, against the tide of suits and they clocked him too, hands reaching for weapons but not quite drawing them. Not yet anyway.

Chance stepped back and drew his weapon. Trying to blend in with the office workers wasn't an option. Even if the two gunmen hadn't just clocked him there weren't any other kids in the building and the decoy Georgie wasn't that good. He paused as the fire alarm abruptly stopped ringing.

"Thank fuck for that." said a voice from the foot of the stairs. He was immediately shushed in to silence by the other gunman as he locked the emergency exit behind the last of the evacuating workers.

Chance glanced at Georgie but thankfully the child was dozing off again in his mothers arms now that the alarm had stopped. He signalled for Maggie to stay put and for Harvey to follow him at a distance. They crept down a couple of flights of stairs, hugging the wall to avoid any shots fired up through the stairwell. Chance was completely silent but Harvey's shoes squeaked and couple of times, leaving Chance wondering if he was doing it deliberately.

Once Chance was satisfied that he had put a bit of space between them and his clients, he indicated silently for Harvey to remain on a stair a few steps up from the bottom of the flight of stairs they stood on. He continued to a similar position on the flight below and waited as the two gunmen crept up the stairs.

 **A/N: Your reviews power my keyboard. Show a fangirl some love! If you read it, review it!**


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Disclaimer: Fox hunting is illegal in my native Britain. Curses! Foiled again! Don't worry Guerrero, I'll come for you anyway.**

Chance waited for them to turn the corner and start up the flight of stairs below him. Fractions of a second before they looked up, Chance vaulted feet first over the railings, hitting the lead gunman square in the face. Luckily for Chance, the man fell back knocking the second gunman off his feet. The man Chance had kicked was out cold, blood trickling from his nose and ears.

 _Must have landed on his head,_ thought Chance, as he assessed and dismissed the threat posed by the bleeding man.

He kicked the gun from the fallen man's hand just to be sure and turned to deal with the second gunman. The other man had dropped his gun in the fall and it lay just out of reach on the landing below. He'd already rolled off the body of his friend and was charging down the stairs in an attempt to reach it.

He was fast.

Chance was faster.

The gunshot tore through the second gunman's knee and he fell to the floor, still reaching for the gun that was tantalisingly just beyond his reach.

Chance picked up the gun just as the man tried to stretch his arm that little bit further to reach his weapon. Chance dropped to one knee, pinning the wounded man down as he checked the gun's clip - still full - and tucked it safely away in his belt.

"Who do you work for? Bateman?" he demanded as he quickly patted him down for more weapons. He found a couple of throwing knives, which he threw out of the man's reach.

"Fuck you." the man spat, struggling a little for breath with Chance's weight on his back.

Chance found the man's wallet and flipped it open to find a drivers licence, a membership card to an LA gym, and a business card for Bateman's nightclub no less.

"I'll take that as a yes Mr…" Chance looked at the name on the drivers licence, "Andrew Dixon." Before he had a chance to reply Chance knocked him out cold with the but of his gun.

He took the stairs at a run two at a time. He was relieved to see Harvey was where he left him, although he was definitely looking a bit pale.

"Stay there." Chance said as he passed him.

"But what if someone heard the shot?" Harvey asked.

"Stay put!"

Chance reached the top of the stairs, his heart rate and breathing only slightly faster than usual.

"You Okay?" Maggie nodded. Miraculously Georgie had fallen asleep and hadn't woken at the sound of the gunshot echoing up the stairwell. Maggie had covered his ears to drown out the sound of the alarm earlier and obviously hadn't moved a muscle since then. Chance led his frightened clients quietly down to the landing where Harvey was waiting nervously, still clutching the decoy Georgie.

"Maggie, stay here. Don't move until I come get you. I have to take care of the guy in the lobby." Maggie nodded and held Georgie tight. "Harvey, you got Maggie's car keys?"

"Yes but…"

"As soon as the guy is out of the way I want you to take Georgie the second here out to Maggie's car and strap him in to the kid's seat as carefully as he was the real deal and then drive like a bat out of hell. I'll call you when they're safe."

"But what if they catch up to me and find out I don't have the real Georgie?" Harvey protested.

"I'm sure you'll think of something. Personally I'd make sure they didn't catch me, but hey, that's just me. Maggie, you ever fired a gun?"

"Uh, yes. Once. At a range."

"Good. Then I won't have to show you which end is which."

Chance pulled Maggie's hand away from Georgie's head and placed the bad guy's gun gently in her hand.

"That's safety on, safety off. Got it?" She nodded. The gun seemed ridiculously large in Maggie's shaking hand.

"Don't worry. You can do this." He tried to sound reassuring. "You probably won't have to use it. Just remember not to point it at anything you don't want to kill. Ready Harvey? Stay close and be ready to run for the car."


	9. Responsible Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Disclaimer: The rights belong to Fox on the box, but Maggie and Georgie 100% Tree**

With all the to-ing and fro-ing on the staircase, Chance was reminded of the riddle of the man trying to cross the river with the bag of grain, the chicken and the fox, with only room in the boat for two out of the three at any given time. He really could have used an extra pair of hands, or rather fists, at the moment but Guerrero was busy today, end of story.

If his luck held out he'd be able to neutralise the bad guy in the lobby, send the van chasing Harvey away from the scene and get Maggie and the kid away to a safe house. It went against his personal code, not to mention his instincts, to let Maggie and Georgie out of his sight but it couldn't be helped. The elevator would probably have shut down automatically when the fire alarm sounded so the stairs were the bad guys' best option to reach them. Keeping a little space between Harvey and his clients in the echo chamber of the staircase was the best he could do to stall Harvey from making a move. Aside from the Bateman connection, Chance had no evidence that Harvey was working against him but his gut screamed otherwise.

Chance carefully eased open the fire door that lead to the lobby of large, glass fronted building. He only had seconds to observe the evacuated office workers milling around in the parking lot beyond the glass before the third gunman started taking shots at him from behind the reception desk. Chance flattened himself against the wall next to the fire door and shoved Harvey clear of the door beside him. Any minute now the building would be swamped with firemen doing a sweep to check that there was no fire and if the shots fired had been reported, which they probably had, the place would be crawling with law enforcement too.

He had to draw the gunman in to the stairwell to deal with him out of sight of the people in the parking lot. Chance took a breath and fired blindly in the direction of the reception desk, empting the entire clip and dropping the gun loudly. He knew it was unlikely that he'd hit the man but the volley of shots tore through the silence of the stairwell shocking the sleeping Georgie in to a gut wrenching, screaming, crying that was echoed again through the cell phone in Harvey's pocket.

The final gunman smiled as he realised that the idiot who was supposed to be guarding the brat had just emptied his clip, dropped his weapon and given away the position of his target. A total lack of curiosity for the fate of his colleagues, and the pressing need to get out before the cops arrived, ensured that he decided to charge in to the stairwell. He doubted the man even had a secondary firearm, judging by the rookie mistakes he'd made so far.

Chance was ready for him, easily knocking the gun from his hand as he tried to ease through the doorway, leading with his weapon. Chance threw his weight against the heavy fire door, momentarily pinning his adversary's extended arm.

"You ready?" Chance asked Harvey. He nodded. "When I say go, you run for the car. Got it?" Harvey nodded again.

With one motion Chance released the pressure on the fire door, grabbed the bad guy's arm and yanked him past Harvey in to the landing at the foot of the stairs.

"Go! Now!" he shouted to the startled man holding the screaming decoy.

Harvey snapped out of his momentary surprise and ran through the open door.

Chance had his hands full dealing with the bad guy, who quickly recovered his footing and lunged towards him, so he wasn't sure if the look that flickered between Harvey and his opponent was one of recognition or not.

Chance allowed the guy to charge in to him, pinning him to the wall with a grunt. It gave Harvey an opportunity to run for it and the guy wasn't big or strong enough to more than slightly wind Chance anyway. Satisfied that Harvey had made it across to lobby to the glass doors, Chance braced his arm and struck down in to the man's shoulder with his elbow. The man grunted in pain and as soon as he eased the pressure on Chance's rib cage he heard two of his own ribs snap as Chance drove his knee in to the side of his chest.

 _Must be your lucky day_ , thought Chance as he stood over the stricken man, checking for further weapons. He recognised the telltale short, laboured breathing of a punctured lung in the man, which could easily be fatal if left untreated. Fortunately for the bad guy, along with cops and firemen, there was bound to be an EMT or two arriving in the parking lot.

Satisfied the man posed no further threat Chance grabbed his gun and bounded up the stairs past the fallen bad guys to Maggie and Georgie.

It wasn't the first time Chance had to dodge a bullet from an over-wrought client who'd assumed he was one of the bad guys, coming to get them, and it probably wouldn't be the last.

"Hey! It's me! Good guy! Remember?"

Maggie lowered the gun sobbing. Poor Georgie was practically throwing a fit at the sound of the gun firing so close. Chance gently disarmed his client and hung up the call to Harvey's cell that was allowing the decoy to "cry". Maggie flinched as Chance put a reassuring arm around her and the crying child.

"It's Okay. I'm going to get you out of here now." Chance felt some of Maggie's tension ease up and Georgie responded by down grading his hysterical screams to mournful, shuddering sobs. Chance took Maggie by the shoulders forcing her to look up into his eyes.

"I'm going to call my partner now, Okay?" she nodded.

"Need a ride, buddy?" Winston didn't waste any time. He knew why Chance was calling. He'd picked up news of the fire alarm at Maggie's building on the police scanner and figured Chance might need his help.

"Where are you?"

"I'm in a the van in alley behind the building. South side I think."

"Pull up to the second to last window. We're coming to you."

Chance could already hear the sound of the firemen checking the ground floor. It wouldn't be long before they found the injured men and Chance would rather avoid hours of questioning. He led Maggie to the office overlooking the alley where, sure enough Winston was waiting with the van. They were only one floor up and it was a easy jump to the roof of the vehicle below but Chance had to practically throw the woman and child through the window.

"I can't! It's too far! Georgie will fall!"

In the end, Maggie reluctantly allowed Chance to hold her son as she dropped to the van bellow and he passed the squirming child down to her. Once they were all safely inside, Winston hit the gas and they sped off.

"Bateman?" Winston asked.

"Yeah, Bateman."


	10. Responsible Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Disclaimer: Fox own'em but I luuuuurve them**

"How are you doing sweetheart?" Winston asked. Maggie hadn't said a word since he'd helped her and Georgie in to the front seat of the van. Chance was getting changed out of his blood stained business suit into the jeans and t-shirt he kept stashed in the back. Chance caught Winston's eye in the rear-view mirror and nodded towards Maggie who was slowly rocking back and forth with Georgie in her lap, pressed close to her chest.

Winston took the hint. It was all too easy for a person unused to extreme stress to go in to full-on shock in a situation like this. Getting her talking would help keep her focused on the here and now.

"So how did a nice girl like you get herself in a big ol' mess like this then?"

Chance rolled his eyes.

 _Real subtle Winston_ , thought Chance. _At least you didn't talk about the weather_.

"Huh?" Maggie stirred a little at the sound of Winston's voice but her eyes were still dangerously distant.

"How did you meet Georgie's dad then?" Winston push on, determined to get a coherent response.

"He came to my booth on the beach one day. Bought some wind chimes." Maggie seemed as if she were waking from a deep sleep, taking notice of her surroundings for the first time and reassuring herself that Georgie was still safe in her arms.

"He asked you out?" Winston prompted, trying to draw her in to a proper conversation.

"No. He came back the next day and bought some more. He came back every day for a week, always buying the same thing. I offered him a bulk discount and he laughed."

"And?"

"He turned me down and I offered to buy him a drink so he could explain what he found so fascinating about my wind chimes." Winston though he saw a hint of a smile as her thoughts drifted back to happier days.

"Smooth operator…" Chance mumbled.

Maggie frowned. She wasn't sure whether Chance's comment referred to herself or Ethan but she was suddenly painfully aware she was sharing very personal, very private memories with two men she hardly knew.

"It doesn't matter now. It's none of your business anyway."

Winston smiled. If she was up to telling them to but out, she was probably going to be okay. Her eyes were much brighter and alert, if still puffy.

"Where are we going?" she asked.

"Grandma's house." said Chance.

"Swedish Grandma's house." added Winston, noticing her puzzled look. "It's an apartment belonging to an old buddy of mine. He's on deployment at the moment so it's empty. He won't mind us using it to lie low while we figure out our next move. It's probably not a good idea to head back to our office right now."

"Why do you call him Swedish Grandma?"

"You'll see." said Chance laughing.

As they stepped in to the apartment she did see and let out a little laugh. Winston's old buddy was clearly a fan of Ikea. He seemed to own every item from the store's back catalogue and in contrast to each item's sleek simple design, the overall effect of such a multitude of items confined to one apartment was that of an elderly female relative hoarding trinkets.

Winston smiled when he saw Maggie got the joke.

"Yeah, my boy sure knows how to shop. Hell of a marine though."

Chance and Winston left Maggie in the lounge, settling an exhausted Georgie down in front of the TV to watch Sesame Street with a box of crackers. Chance pulled the kitchen door shut most of the way behind them, leaving a gap wide enough so he could keep an eye on his clients.

"Did you speak to Ethan Cartwright?" he asked. Winston nodded.

"It's kind of complicated but I'll give you the gist. Bateman had some deal on the table with some Russian mafia types, he was going to trade some fancy stolen artwork for a weapons shipment. Only problem was, he hadn't quite acquired the artwork yet."

"Let me guess," Chance said. "Ethan Cartwright got to the artwork first?"

Winston nodded. "It gets worse. Bateman drops Ethan's cousin Harvey, his accountant, in it with the Feds."

"And Ethan pulls a few strings and Harvey avoids jail. I see where this is going."

"Oh, there's more! Ethan sells the artwork to the Russian buyers that Bateman had lined up, cutting Bateman out of the deal and making him a laughing stock from here to Moscow. Now Bateman has to hit back or say goodbye to his reputation for good. Word is he's going to ransom Ethan's kid back to him for the full cost of the Russian deal, plus interest."

"I'm guessing that's a lot."

"Millions. He's offering a bounty to anyone that brings him the kid and his mother alive."

"So I can expect more trouble then."

"In a word, yes."

Chance poured himself a coffee, never taking his eyes off his clients in the next room and asked, "Where does Harvey fit in with all this?"

"Ethan thinks he's trustworthy after he hauled his ass out of trouble with the Feds but I have my doubts. He's got to be looking for a way to pull himself out of this mess. He could well try and ingratiate himself with his old boss by handing over the kid. Where is Harvey anyway?"

"I sent him out of the front of Maggie's building as a decoy." Chance smiled, sipping his coffee, "I said we'd be in touch."

"You do realise he could still be on our side? He could be innocent in all this. Relatively speaking."

Chance sighed. He didn't trust Harvey but he couldn't exactly just leave him hanging either. The sound of a cell phone ringing cut through his thoughts.

"Harvey? Are you Okay? Where are you?" Maggie's voice drifted in from the lounge.

 _Damn, didn't I take. her phone at the office?_

He couldn't remember.

 _Looks like I'll have to make a decision about Harvey sooner rather than later._ He thought.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Disclaimer: Mine! Mine! All mine! Except what belongs to Fox.**

Maggie hung up as Chance and Winston entered the lounge.

"He's hiding in the restroom of a Seven-Eleven about ten minutes away from here. You have to go get him!" Maggie pleaded.

"This is probably a trap to draw us out in to the open." said Chance.

"We don't know that for sure. Why'd you let her keep her phone anyway?"

"I wasn't aware that I had."

Maggie blushed. Chance had left the phone in the office overlooking the alley way but she'd slipped it in her purse when he was checking the van was in position.

"Can they track her from her cell?" Winston asked.

Maggie felt sick. She hadn't thought of that.

"I don't know. It was a pretty short call. Maybe if they knew the general area we were in to begin with… Guerrero would know."

"Yeah, Guerrero… that lazy son of a bitch."

Chance spoke up in his friend's defence, "I don't think he's just kicking back somewhere with a beer Winston. He's got business to attend to. Even Guerrero needs a personal day sometimes."

"Whatever." Winston deliberately shied away from thinking about what kind of activities might constitute a need for Guerrero's day off. "So we going to go get him or what?"

Chance hesitated. He knew in his gut that Harvey was trouble but maybe Winston was right. Could he really hang the guy out to dry without firm evidence he was up to no good? What was the difference between him and the bad guys really, if he let an innocent guy get hurt or killed?

"Ethan told me to trust you and to trust Harvey. If I can't trust one, how can I trust the other?" Maggie demanded.

"You can't fault her logic, Chance."

 _Yeah,_ thought Chance, _unless Ethan was wrong._

"Okay Winston, you go get him. We'll stay here. Make sure you're not followed."

"I have done this before.." Winston grumbled as he left the apartment.

Chance sank in to an sofa facing the front door, his gun drawn and resting on the arm of the sofa. Maggie went back to watching Sesame Street with Georgie, who was getting increasingly restless.

"Is he okay?" he asked.

"Just overwhelmed I think. And hungry. He's always hungry!"

Chance smiled. "There's usually some bread in the icebox. You could fix him some toast. I think I saw some grape jelly in the kitchen too. You should make yourself something to eat as well. Your blood sugar could probably use a boost."

To Chance's surprise, Maggie picked Georgie up and put him in his lap.

"I think I can trust you with him while I make us a snack. Just don't let him play with your gun."

Maggie stepped back and smiled. The image of their large, blonde bodyguard sitting there, with her son nestled again him on one side and a loaded gun in the other hand appealed to her. She was beginning to feel safe for the first time in days.

Chance was right, there was some bread. Maggie busied herself making several rounds of toast with jelly. She checked the refrigerator, hoping to find some milk for Georgie, but the open cartoon she found was practically a bio hazard. It looked like Winston's buddy had been out of town for a while. She dumped the curdled milk down the drain, running the water to wash away the lumps. She cut Georgie's toast in to fingers and carried it through to the lounge.

Maggie put the plate in Georgie's lap and his fat little hands seized a finger of toast and crammed it eagerly into his open mouth.

"Watch out," she cautioned Chance. "He's a messy eater."

"Have you eaten?" He asked marvelling at just how much toast it was possible for a three-year-old-child to stuff in his mouth without choking.

"I made a whole stack of it for us." Maggie called from the kitchen. "I thought you might be hungry too."

Chance was beginning to worry that with that much toast in his mouth, maybe Georgie would choke. Just to be sure, he gently pulled Georgie's hand away from his mouth as he attempted to cram another toast finger in his mouth. The child beamed at him and thrust the toast towards Chance's mouth, willing to share his snack. Chance accepted the slightly mangled piece of toast and his stomach growled, confirming that he was actually hungry.

Maggie was walking back from the kitchen with a large plate of toast when there was a thunderous pounding at the front door.

"Maggie! Let me in! It's me, Harvey!"

"Maggie no! Don't open it!" Chance shouted, gun in hand.

It was too late. The door was wide open. Bateman strolled in, Harvey following closely behind with two stony faced thugs. One of the men grabbed Maggie, roughly twisting her arms behind her back, knocking the plate of toast to the floor.

Bateman, with out breaking eye contact with Chance, calmly shot Maggie in the foot. She screamed and the thug holding her shifted his grip so he could clamp one meaty hand over her mouth.

"That makes the whole running away thing a bit more troublesome don't you think?" Bateman smirked.

"You think I'm going to just hand over the kid?" Chance said. It was just bravado and everyone in the room knew it. He couldn't realistically protect Georgie with Maggie at gunpoint and he wasn't going to risk a confrontation with armed men in such a confined space with a child in his arms. The risk was unacceptable. He had no choice and he knew it.

"I'm not a patient man, Junior. Hand the kid over."

The use of that name, his old name, brought bile to Chance's throat.

He felt helpless.

"A person can survive on one kidney, you know." Bateman said, pressing the barrel of his gun in to Maggie's back, making her squirm and sob.

"Okay, take him! But let her go!"

Bateman laughed.

Harvey stepped forward and pried Georgie from him. The other thug disarmed Chance and struck him hard over the head with his gun.

The world swam out of focus and lurched to one side as Chance hit the floor.

The voice sounded distant and muffled.

"Bring the girl."

Chance fought the rising tide of nausea, struggling to hold on to consciousness.

"No, don't kill him. I have an old friend who has an interest in keeping him alive."

He tried and failed to make sense of the words before he passed out, the world fading to black as Chance felt himself dragged in to the darkness with the knowledge of his failure.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Disclaimer: No real children were harmed in the writing of this story.**

"Chance!"

Someone was calling his name. It sounded important.

"Chance!"

The voice again. And pain. A deep throbbing pain that threatened blow his skull wide open.

"Chance! Wake up you son of a bitch!"

A new kind of pain, punctuating the throbbing radiating from the back of his skull. A stinging pain across his left cheek. A slap?

Chance groaned.

"WAKE UP!"

 _Jeez, Winston sounded pissed._

Chance experimented with opening his eyes, the light sparking whole new shades of pain in his head.

 _Yeah, it was Winston alright._

"Easy! You've had quite a knock on the head there. I'm going to have to get you to a doctor."

"'m fine. Got a headache."

"No shit!"

Chance tried to sit up but the room span out control and he fell back on his side, vomiting in to the hand knotted rag rug beneath him. It was mostly coffee but as the spasms died down to dry heaves and eventually stopped, he thought he could detect the aftertaste of something sweet.

Grape jelly.

He tried to sit up again, slowly this time. Winston pushed a glass of water in to his hand, instructing him to sip it slowly before he tried to speak.

Grape jelly. Georgie. Maggie. It all rushed back, like a kick to his gut.

"Harvey. Bateman. They were here. He shot Maggie. I had to give them Georgie." Every word was agony.

"Yeah, I saw the blood. Is she…?" Winston's words trailed off.

"She's alive. Bateman shot her in the foot."

Winston nodded, imagining the impossible situation his friend had found himself in.

"I knew there was something wrong when I got to the Seven Eleven. It was freakin' closed. I high tailed it back here as soon as I could. I'm sorry buddy, I should have trusted your instincts. I should never have fallen for that."

With a monumental effort, Chance stood up, ignoring the flecks dancing in front of his eyes.

"We have to go after them. Now."

"Chance, you've got to be suffering from a pretty serious concussion right now. First thing we do is get you to a doctor!"

"I'm fine. Look, I'm standing up, I'm walking around. I was only out for like a minute. We have to go after them right now. Maggie's already been shot, who knows what Bateman will do next."

Winston hesitated. He wanted to go after Maggie and the kid as much as Chance did, but he wasn't sure his partner was up to it just yet. He looked at Chance, swaying slightly, one hand gripping the back of a chair for stability. Then he saw his eyes. Cold, blue ice. He was going to go after them with or without him.

"Okay, but I drive. Bateman flew in from LA on a piece of shit six-seater As far as I know, it's still waiting for him at the airstrip out by the freeway. Odds are: that's where he's heading."

Chance flashed him a grateful smile. As they headed for the door he spotted Maggie's cell phone laying on the floor next to her purse. Chance picked it up.

They must have used the phone to track them, he thought, but how?

As they tore through the streets to the freeway Chance realised the painful simplicity of his mistake. He thought he'd ditched the phone back at Maggie's office building so he hadn't checked the handset itself for bugs. It was an unforgivable lapse of focus.

Chance began cursing with such vehemence that even Winston, a veteran cop and no stranger to colourful language, was taken aback. Chance ripped the battery cover from the cell phone and sure enough: there was a tiny transmitter.

Maggie's cell started to ring, startling Chance and causing Winston to swerve slightly. They were doing over 90mh, weaving between traffic in an attempt to catch up to Bateman, and Winston was gripping the steering wheel like grim death. Chance put the call on speaker phone.

"It's a lot easy to sneak up on a target if you don't transmit your position you know." Bateman sounded amused and not in the least bit concerned at their pursuit. "Maybe you're not half as good as they say, Junior."

This time Chance was prepared to hear his old name, it causing him no more discomfort than the slightest involuntary flutter in his gut. Winston however was shocked and turned to see Chance's reaction. Chance merely shrugged and gestured for Winston to keep his eyes on the road.

"Please tell me you did at least find the bug?" he taunted.

"You're not leaving with my clients."

"Of course, such a spectacular failure would be bad for business wouldn't it? It would serve you right though, for trusting Harvey. The man is a worm. The whole ransom idea was his. Typical accountant, he thinks it's all about the money. But we know different don't we Junior?"

Chance didn't like where this was heading. They'd assumed Bateman would want to keep Maggie and Georgie Garner alive in order to get the ransom from Ethan Cartwright.

"Cartwright will pay you the ransom Bateman. You know he wouldn't have gotten me involved if he didn't care about the kid."

While they were talking, Chance was franticly scanning through the vehicles on the road ahead of them, looking for some sign to indicate which one held Bateman and his clients. It needed to be big enough to carry Bateman, Harvey, the Garners and one of the heavies, assuming the other was driving. He spotted a sporty mini-van with heavily tinted windows a couple of cars ahead of them. It was moving fast and erratically. Chance pointed it out to Winston, who nodded.

"But there are things that money can't buy, Junior." Bateman's use of the name had stopped being unnerving and was now just plain irritating. "Reputation for instance. Ethan Cartwright made me look like a fool with that Russian deal. Financial compensation doesn't even begin to cover what that deal has cost me."

"There's not much Maggie or Georgie Garner can do about it." Chance knew the standard negotiators' trick of referring to hostages by their names in an attempt to humanise them to their captor wasn't really going to cut it, but with his head still pounding he couldn't think what else to do. He had to find a way to stop Bateman from getting to his plane.

"I agree. And so why, I ask myself, am I bothering to take them back to LA? It's not about the money, it's all about reputation."

The door to the minivan slid open.

"My god, he wouldn't…" Winston hit the breaks as Harvey was thrown struggling from the vehicle in front, mouth gagged, his hands tied and the figure of a small child tucked to his chest.

"It's the decoy!" Chance shouted.

"But how can we be…?"

Chance didn't waste time arguing with him. He kicked Winston's foot from the break and jammed his foot flat on the gas. The eerie sound of Bateman's laughter coming from the phone in Chance's hand confirmed that the "child" was indeed the decoy.

"You gonna let me drive now?" Winston shoved Chance back to his side of the vehicle without slowing down. They'd dropped back it bit behind the minivan but Winston soon closed the distance between them.

"That would have been a good trick, if I hadn't made that decoy myself." Chance said, trying to keep his voice calmer than he felt.

Bateman laughed again, "Well, after that bump on your head I had to be sure you could tell the difference."

Seconds dragged themselves in to years as Chance finally registered what he'd been hearing on the cell phone. Bateman's voice. Bateman's laugh. Just Bateman. He hadn't heard Maggie. He hadn't heard Georgie crying, and Georgie would surely be crying. The knowledge that his clients were dead, and probably had been since before Bateman made the call, was no consolation to Chance as he saw their bodies hurled limply like rag dolls from the minivan.

He observed in slow motion, as if from a distance, as the cell phone fell from his hand, as Winston hit the breaks swerving to avoid the other cars on the road, as breaks squealed and cars collided in an attempt to avoid hitting the broken bodies lying discarded in the middle of the freeway.

He'd failed.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Disclaimer: Human Target belongs to Fox, who murdered Firefly.**

Winston tried to stop Chance from seeing the bodies. There were deep abrasions and broken bones from the fall from the minivan. The tarmac had been unforgiving but the post mortem injuries did nothing to mask the unmistakable damage of a point blank shot to the head from a small calibre weapon, not to Winston's eyes anyway.

He tried to see the quick, relatively painless deaths as merciful compared to the agonising injuries the woman and child would have been subjected to had they still be alive when thrown from the vehicle, but looking in to the face of a murdered child, he saw no mercy.

Chance did see the bodies. In the end Winston felt he had no right to stop him. Maggie and Georgie Garner died whilst under his protection. Winston hoped that when faced with the reality of their deaths Chance would stand down, stop pushing himself and see to his own injuries but he knew Chance too well to really believe that.

At first Chance just waited silently with him for the authorities to show up to sort out what would be, to most people, just another traffic incident on the freeway. Chance didn't speak and for once Winston didn't know what to say. He was still worried about his friend's head injury but how could he gauge Chance's responses in the aftermath of what just happened? What would be a normal response to the situation and what would be a symptom of severe head trauma?

Chance slipped away amidst the chaos of the emergency vehicles. Had Winston not overheard the man complaining his motorbike had been stolen by a guy with "a crazy look, like he was gonna kill someone" he wouldn't have known what had happened.

Winston did the only thing he could do. He called Guerrero.

Six years. Six fucking years. Two years of painstaking negotiations through codes, anonymous drop points and secret signals. That didn't include the four years prior to that when he didn't even dare ask for a meeting, fearing all communication would stop. He had the skills and means to find them but the scale of the search, the contacts he'd have to tap, the questions he'd have to ask would alert their enemies, the very people he needed to protect them from. He could find them, but in doing so he would expose them to being found again.

He had only minutes left to get to the agreed meeting place.

The thought of having to wait another six years…

The thought of there never being another chance to see her…

It caused him physical pain.

He was so close, so fucking close.

But Chance needed him. He had no choice.

Guerrero dropped his head forward, slumped over the steering wheel as he allowed himself a moment to feel the agony of turning back, of turning away from seeing his daughter for the first time since the day she was born.

Six years… He didn't even know her name.

Guerrero straightened up and threw the car in to drive.

Winston said he thought Chance was heading for the airstrip. It was going to be close if he was going to make in time to stop him from confronting Bateman and his men. They more than deserved whatever bloody vengeance Chance saw fit to hand out but he was in no state physically or emotionally to handle this right now. Chance was still acting on the blazing fury of the moment and couldn't see that now his clients were dead, the urgency was gone. He now had the time to step back, recover, then attack from a position of strength. But that wasn't Chance's way. That is why he needed Guerrero right now. That's why he always needed someone to pull him back from the brink of self-destruction.

As he drove Guerrero thought over his own part in the case. He could have, no _should_ have done more. If he'd given the case his full attention he would have checked Maggie's cell and found the bug. If he'd been at the apartment he'd have been there to back Chance up. He was haunted by what he'd said to Winston at the office when he'd asked for his help.

" _He's not my kid."_

How different had Georgie's situation been from his own daughter's? Both children were forced in to hiding for fear of their fathers' enemies. What if whoever was watching over his daughter and her mother neglected their responsibilities as he had with Georgie?

Holding Georgie at the office, comforting him, entertaining him the way he'd never been able to do with his own child had been painful enough but the thought that he played a part in the events that led to to the child's death was too much. He couldn't let himself feel that right now. He locked it away. His focus now was on Chance.


	14. Chapter 14

Guerrero reached the airstrip only a minute before Chance. There was no sign of Bateman and his heavies yet. Guerrero had been quite close by when he'd got Winston's call and Chance had been able to take shortcuts inaccessible to the minivan. Guerrero knew he didn't have much time before they showed up.

"Hey dude." he called to Chance as he turned off the engine of the stolen bike.

"I hope you're here to help, I'm not in the mood to kick your ass right now." Chance kicked out the stand, and slowly dismounted.

"Winston told me what happened. Dude… I'm sorry."

"It's okay. Lousy timing I guess. I know today was important for you. Shouldn't you be…?"

Guerrero dropped his gaze to the floor. Chance could see that his friend's decision to be standing here by the airstrip had not been taken lightly and came at great personal cost.

Guerrero shrugged, staring back at him again with expressionless eyes.

"I'm kinda worried about you at the moment, buddy. Winston said you were in bad shape, might not be up for the rough stuff right now. Is that true?"

"Winston is an old woman."

"True, but that doesn't answer my question. Are you really up for another fight with Bateman's men? I heard the last one ended with a knock out."

Guerrero looked at Chance standing there, hands balled in to fists, his jaw clenched. He thought he could detect a slightly unfocused look to his eyes and his feet were further apart than his usual stance. An attempt to compensate for the instability caused by dizziness? It looked as if Winston might have been right, Chance was suffering from a bad concussion and was not fit to fight.

 _Did he even bring a gun with him?_

"I know I fucked up, Guerrero. I need to put his right." Chance made a move to push past Guerrero and head towards the six seater Cessna waiting on the runway. Guerrero grabbed his arm.

"It wasn't all you. We all made mistakes today, Chance. Don't do this to yourself. You can't handle this right now."

Guerrero saw the punch coming in plenty of time to get out of the way. Chance didn't seem able to adjust when his blow failed to connect and he stumbled.

"No way dude. There is no way I'm letting you go after Bateman right now. Get in the car."

"No!" Chance tried to shake his head, but that just made him more unsteady.

Guerrero slipped behind his disorientated friend and slung his arm round his neck in a choke hold. Even in his weakened and dizzy state Chance put up a fight and it was a close thing whether or not he'd be able to dislodge Guerrero before he passed out.

"I'm sorry dude. This is for your own good." He grunted as Chance managed to jab him in the ribs with an elbow. "I can't risk tranqing you when you have a head injury."

When he was sure Chance had passed out, he checked his pulse and breathing, and manoeuvred him in to the back seat of his car. He took care to lie him on his side in case he vomited, and handcuffed him to the place where the front passenger seatbelt was anchored to the chassis of the car, in case he woke up. He threw a blanket over him, taking care no to obstruct his airway. On any other day Chance would have been out of the car before Guerrero could even shut the door.

Guerrero hated seeing Chance so messed up, so vulnerable. He needed to buy his friend some time to recover. Then they could handle Bateman properly.

Bateman was relieved to see there was no sign of the car that had been following them on the freeway when they pulled up at the airfield. There were a handful of cars and a motorbike but no sign of Chance, his driver or the vehicle they'd been riding in. It was unlikely that they would have got here before him anyway. People who considered themselves good guys tended to pull over when you threw people out of a speeding vehicle, dead or alive.

His nerves were still jangling from his run in with Junior. He'd been an admirer of his work for years, before he went all good-guy of course. He'd rather not have gone up against him over this Cartwright problem and was rather disappointed that he'd been so easy to neutralise. That was the problem in letting your feelings get in the way of doing your job. It was a shame though, such a waste of talent.

Bateman was so lost in thought that he didn't even notice the look on his panic ridden pilot's face until he was only a dozen feet away. Guerrero stepped out from behind the pilot, his gun still pressed to the man's head. Bateman's men went for their guns, but Bateman signalled for them to hold their fire.

"Guerrero." he said by way of a greeting. "It's been a while. Just so you know, I can get another pilot, another plane too if needs be."

"I know dude. I just wanted to talk."

"So it's true, the runt of the litter is still running around after Junior."

Bateman watched him carefully to see if the insult got a rise out of him. It didn't. Guerrero just smiled.

"You got me there dude."

"What do you want Guerrero?" The small man was making him deeply uncomfortable. Bateman had hired him in the past to provide intelligence on a very persistent vice detective, purely white collar hacker stuff but he'd heard rumours that Guerrero much more dangerous than his size suggested.

"I'm here to warn you, dude. You've seriously over played your hand."

"How so?" Bateman asked, his stomach knotting.

"Well, let's just overlook the fact that you just murdered the grandson of a seriously old school family orientated mob boss, a kid that also happens to be the son of a very important dude who has all the big boys in LA on speed dial. Putting that aside, you made this shit with Chance personal. Seriously dude, calling him Junior to his face? Implying that you and the old man are best buds or something?"

Bateman felt the blood drain from his face.

"You are small fry to my previous employer and you know it. That's why you didn't kill Chance when you had the opportunity. You're scared of the old man!" From the look on Bateman's face, he saw he'd hit the mark.

"And killing the kid? Chance is never gonna let that go. That dude takes his responsibilities very seriously."

Guerrero enjoyed watching as the true severity of the situation dawned on Bateman.

"You probably should get yourself a different pilot. This one's broken." With that Guerrero shot the pilot in the foot.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Disclaimer: Fox owns the rights, but they can't take the sky from me. Or Guerrero. So there.**

"Dude, it was funny!"

"You're a sick, sick man, Guerrero."

Winston was grateful that Guerrero had managed to stop Chance confronting Bateman and his goons at the airstrip, and although he wasn't exactly thrilled when he saw his friend unconscious and handcuffed in the back of the car, he could understand the need for it. Once they had got Chance safely laid out on the sofa where they could keep an eye on him, Winston grilled Guerrero about exactly what went down at the airstrip. He listened in horror as Guerrero told him he left Chance unconscious and vulnerable in his car and confronted Bateman alone. Winston's mind was still reeling from what would have happened if Guerrero had gotten himself killed and Chance was left there alone and injured, when Guerrero got to the part where he shot the pilot. Guerrero, damn him, was actually laughing!

"Why the hell did you shoot an innocent pilot?" he demanded. Guerrero snorted at the word innocent.

"I know that dude, and he isn't exactly innocent. Besides, I did him a favour. His breath was about 90% proof." Winston knew Guerrero well enough to know that there was more behind the shooting than a concern for a pilot flying whilst under the influence. Some of the best pilots he knew were drunks.

"Why did you really shoot him Guerrero?"

Guerrero looked up from the laptop he'd been working at since they'd got Chance settled on the sofa, then sighed.

"Pilots, especially pilots of small aircraft, are a superstitious bunch. I put Bateman's out of commission firstly to inconvenience him and second to ensure he had difficulty finding a replacement. Once word gets around, no one is going to fly him back to LA and he'll be stuck here for a while." He went back to whatever he was doing on the computer.

"Unless he just jumps on a commercial flight." Winston pointed out.

"He can't do that."

"Why not?"

"Because he's now on the FBI no-fly list and I just cancelled all his credit cards. He can't so much as rent a car right now."

Winston was impressed, not that he'd ever tell him that.

"What about the minivan?"

"Taken care of, dude."

"I see." Winston frowned. "But how did you know Bateman wouldn't just shoot you on sight?"

"That's what the human shield was for, dude. Besides, once I got talking his hired guns decided to rethink their employment options. I don't think they signed up with Bateman to go head to head with the Cartwright family. That name carries a lot of weight. They split when I shot the pilot. Bateman tried to take a shot at me though."

"And?"

Guerrero smiled.

"He's going to wake up alone on the runway with no wallet, no cash and no cell phone."

Winston couldn't help but let out a small laugh.

For the second time in twenty-four hours Chance clawed his way back from unconsciousness. His head didn't feel quite so bad this time around but his throat felt bruised and sore. He thought he could hear Winston's voice. He felt a warm, wet tongue swipe at his mouth and nose.

 _That had better not be Winston_ , Chance thought, his mind still a little jumbled.

He opened his eyes and saw it was only Carmine. He almost laughed, but the sound caught in his throat causing him instead to start coughing. He sat up and Winston and Guerrero were there standing over them, their concern raw and obvious. This time it was Guerrero who handed Chance the water, instructing him to drink.

"How you feeling, buddy?" asked Winston.

"I can honestly say I've felt better." Chance's voice was a little hoarse and he glared at Guerrero.

 _That's a good sign_ , thought Winston. _He remembers what happened and he's talking coherently. He's already on the mend._

There was an awkward silence as Chance and Guerrero each seemed to try and outstare the other. Winston decided that he'd better leave them to sort it out between themselves.

"I think you should eat. I'll fix you something." Winston said, leaving the room.

"Thanks Winston." Chance didn't even blink.

"You were going to get yourself killed." Guerrero simply stated the fact.

Chance stared for a moment more before he shrugged. He leaned back on the sofa, eyes closed with Carmine's head in his lap.

"Talk to me, dude."

Chance opened his eyes, giving Carmine a good scratch behind his ears.

"What do you want me to say?" he asked.

It was Guerrero's turn to shrug.

"What happened to Bateman?" Chance asked.

"He's not going anywhere. We'll go after him when you've rested."

"I'm fine."

"No, you're not."

"And I suppose you get to decide when I'm ready?"

"Damn right."

"Fuck you, Guerrero."

"Right back at ya buddy."

Winston had hoped that Guerrero would force Chance to rest up for at least a couple of days, but after a huge meal and a solid night's sleep, to all outward appearances, he was more or less back to his old self and eager to track down Bateman. Winston had his doubts about how Chance managed to sleep so well. He knew Maggie and Georgie's deaths had effected him deeply even if he didn't show it right now. Even considering the head injury, the Chance he knew wouldn't be able to sleep easy with their deaths weighing on his already overburdened conscience. He suspected that Guerrero had slipped him something to make him sleep. He denied it of course, but it was the only explanation that made sense.

"Can't you just rest up for one day?" Winston pleaded as Chance poured himself a coffee.

"Not until I finish the job. Bateman isn't going to stick around in town forever." Winston opened his mouth to protest but Chance continued, "I know Guerrero has clipped his wings but he's going to make a move sometime and I want to get there first."

"Hey dude."

 _Speak of the devil._

"Will you please talk some sense in to him?"

Guerrero dumped his bag on the table and looked at Chance leaning against the counter top drinking his coffee. His hands were rock steady and the sedative he'd slipped him last night had obviously done the trick. His eyes were bright and focused despite the haunted look that told him Chance had not yet dealt with the emotional fallout of his clients' deaths. Physically though, he was okay.

"Are you up to it dude?" he asked.

Winston threw his hands in the air in exasperation.

"Definitely." Chance said, with just the faintest hint of a smile.

"Some help you are!" Winston yelled.

Guerrero nodded. Winston was about to launch in to a lengthy tirade about the foolishness of picking fights when still recovering from a head injury when, without warning, Guerrero threw a punch at Chance.

Winston watched, open mouthed in surprise, as Chance easily deflected the blow and smacked Guerrero open handed in the face, the heal of his hand hitting his nose and top lip. He didn't even spill his coffee. Guerrero was grinning like a madman, blood streaming from his nose and his split lip.

"Satisfied?" asked Chance, taking another sip of coffee.

"How do I know you didn't plan that?" Winston asked, suspicious of this little display.

"Because, dude, if we'd have planned it, I wouldn't be bleeding right now."


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Disclaimer:The rights are Fox's but the story is all me.**

"Are you sure they're still in there?" Chance asked for the third time in under ten minutes.

He and Guerrero had just pulled up in an unmarked van in a loading bay behind the hospital.

"Relax dude. My contact said Bateman checked in at about ten last night. He made sure he was admitted and has been keeping him sedated for us. Harvey isn't going anywhere either. The doctors gave him a 50/50 shot of not ending up a vegetable."

Chance took a deep breath. "Okay let's go."

They entered through the fire door that Guerrero's contact had left propped open for them. They took the stairs to the second floor where an young intern was waiting to let them on to the ward. Guerrero gave the young man the slightest of nods and in return he pointed to a side room. The intern walked over to the nurse's station and began flirting outrageously with a middle aged woman in pink scrubs, the only other member of staff on the ward. With the nurse distracted they slipped in to the side room.

Chance smiled when he realised that Guerrero's intern friend had managed to swing it so Harvey Cartwright and Adrian Bateman were room mates. Harvey was in a seriously bad way. His head was heavily bandaged and what little of his bloated and shredded face showed through was virtually unrecognisable. He was hooked up to all sorts of machines, some of which Chance knew were more usually found in the ICU. Chance wondered if the intern was going to get in trouble for helping them out.

Guerrero made a b-line for Harvey's breathing apparatus and disconnected the tube breathing oxygen in to Harvey's mangled body.

"Guerrero, put that back." Chance knew a cacophony of alarms would go off if Harvey's breathing or pulse stopped. Guerrero reluctantly reconnected the tube.

"Can I at least leave this in his notes?" he said, waving an envelope.

"What is it?" Chance asked.

"Harvey's living will. It includes a DNR request."

Chance knew the document was bogus. "What the hell. Go ahead."

As Guerrero tucked the envelope in Harvey's chart, Chance turned to look at the occupant of the other bed. Bateman. He was clearly still sedated, the thin line of drool running from the corner of his mouth testified to that, but he was semi-conscious and clearly terrified. Chance walked slowly over to the bed and leaned down so close their noses were almost touching. He stared at Bateman for a moment, making sure the man recognised him.

"We haven't been formally introduced. My name is Christopher Chance. Me and my buddy Guerrero here are going to take you on a little road trip."

Bateman flinched at the sound of Guerrero's name.

Once Guerrero had checked the coast was clear, dragging a doped up Bateman out of bed and man-handling him down to the van was easy. They threw him in the back of the van and drove away without incident.

"Shouldn't there be security footage of what we just did?" asked Chance.

"Nope. The east wing of the hospital had a little glitch with its security cameras this morning."

"Oh, okay."

They drove on in silence for a few minutes. Once Guerrero felt that they'd put enough distance between them and the hospital, he pulled over and cut the engine. They could hear the sound of Bateman sobbing in the back.

"Why did you stop?" asked Chance.

"Because I need to know this is really how you want to handle this. I need to know that six months down the line you're not going to be eaten up with regret that you didn't just put a bullet in the bastard's head."

Chance thought about it for a moment. He was so tempted to do what Guerrero was suggesting and shoot the guy who'd murdered Maggie and Georgie but he knew what he wanted to do, what he needed to do.

"I'm sure."

Guerrero shook his head but he respected Chance's decision. He started the engine.

"'Nobody deserves to die.' Do you still believe that? After what Bateman did?" he asked.

"Yeah," said Chance, "I do. But I'm having trouble feeling it right now so let's get moving."

They drove the rest of the way to the deserted warehouse in silence.

When they arrived at their destination Guerrero drove them straight in to the warehouse itself. Three men waited for them beside a couple of cars with tinted windows. Two of the men were obviously body guards, dressed in dark suits that did nothing to disguise the steroid pumped muscle within. The third man was of average build and was dressed in the kind of suit that cost more than the average family car. He turned to greet them as they stepped out of the van.

"Mr. Chance. Mr. Guerrero."

The look of emptiness and grief on Ethan Cartwright's face was painful to see. Guerrero wouldn't even look at him directly.

"Mr. Cartwright. I'm so sorry for what happened to Ms Garner and your son." The words felt so inadequate but it was the best Chance could manage.

Cartwright nodded and they stood there in silence for a moment until it became unbearable.

"If there is ever anything I can do.." Chance began but Cartwright waved him to silence.

"That will not be necessary. From what I understand you performed your duties admirably. It was my mistake in trusting Harvey that…" he seemed unable to finish the sentence. There was another painful silence.

"Bateman is in the van." It wasn't really a question but Chance found himself nodding anyway.

"He's still sedated." Guerrero said. "You might want to let him wake up before you ah… talk to him."

"I understand. Leave the van. I have provided you with a car. You will find payment for your services in the trunk."

"I can't take your money." said Chance.

"I would prefer that you did. I want to consider the matter closed and final. What you chose to with it is your own affair."

Guerrero took the keys held out by one of the body guards and headed to the car he'd indicated. With his usual lack of tact, he popped open the trunk and let out a low whistle. Chance, embarrassed by Guerrero's typical display of interest in getting paid, decided it was time to leave.

Chance was opening the door of the car when Cartwright spoke.

"Harvey?"

Chance was about to reply when Guerrero spoke for him.

"He's a vegetable. He'll be dead by the end of the day."

Chance frowned. Guerrero could have easily slipped something in Harvey's IV when he'd been introducing himself to Bateman. He considered asking Guerrero if he had as they drove away but decided, on balance, that he'd rather not know for sure. Although he could hazard a guess, he'd also rather not know exactly what Cartwright had planned for Bateman.


	17. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Epilogue

Epilogue

Cartwright's payment turned out to be a painting rather than cash, and an expensive one at that. Chance, Winston and Guerrero were standing in the office admiring it.

"Is that…?" Winston asked

"Sure is." Chance replied.

"But wasn't it stolen?"

"From the Guggenheim last year. I guess we know who took it." Chance said.

Winston let out an appreciative whistle. "What the hell are we going to do with it?"

"I know a guy..." Guerrero said.

"No." Chance interrupted. "We're keeping it."

"Are you mad?" demanded Winston. "Do you have any idea what it's worth? Not to mention what would happen if we got caught with it?"

"Relax Winston. I'll keep it upstairs. No one will see it but us. Besides, if anyone did we could say it was a copy."

"But dude…"

"We are in no way financially benefiting from the Garner case."

Chance could see they understood and the question of selling the painting was dropped. They stood looking at the painting a while longer. Its subject was a fitting memorial for Maggie and Gerogie. It depicted a mother and child walking hand in hand beneath an avenue of trees.

"Oh, I nearly forgot." Winston said, breaking the sombre silence. "This arrived for you this morning Guerrero. At least I think it's for you. It's just addressed to G."

Guerrero snatched the postcard from Winston's hand and practically ran from the room.

"What did it say?" asked Chance.

"Beats me." Winston replied. "it was just a bunch of numbers and crazy ass symbols."

Chance found Guerrero in the kitchen, grinning with an enthusiasm he'd never seen before.

"What does it say? Who's it from?"

"It says "her name" dude!" he handed Chance the card. He looked at it but he was none the wiser. It was as Winston described, a jumble of numbers and symbols. He turned the card over and saw it was a botanical drawing of a Lilium columbianum, a tiger lily.

"I missed meeting her but her mother sent me this. I know my daughter's name dude, it's Lily!"

Chance smiled at his friend and clapped his hand on his shoulder.

"Congratulations buddy."

Guerrero stuffed the postcard in his pocket as Winston came to ask what all the fuss was about. When he saw the two ex-hitmen beaming at each other he decided not ask. Whatever had put a smile back on his friends' faces was fine by him.

THE END


End file.
